Posted 11:53 AM by Floyd

A gaggle of economic illiterates wrote letters to the San Jose Mercury News -- but to the Mr. Roadshow column, not to the opinion page. I cannot be deterred by such evasive maneuvers. (However I can be slowed down by drinking beer and listening to heavy metal into the wee hours of Saturday morning after the Oakland A's win a game in the 13th inning.) I will provide financial advice along with my criticisms because that's the kind of nice guy I am.

Friday being gas price day, let me defend higher gas prices.

- Petroleum is the raw material for fertilizers, plastics, electricity and many other key products.

- Everybody knows that there is a finite amount of petroleum, though actual numbers can be argued.

- Though there is some denial, everybody knows there is a problem with pollution and global warming caused by production and use of fossil fuels.

- Though there is some denial, a great deal of world unrest revolves around the availability of petroleum. The only steps we can take now to protect these resources for our grandchildren are careful conservation and a search for alternatives.

The most effective mechanism to create conservation is the popularity of hybrid vehicles. I believe prices should soon be raised to a minimum of $4 per gallon, by taxes if necessary. That is the only way we will even get started on more efficient cars and trucks and on renewable and alternative energy and transportation sources.

Bob Snively
Morgan Hill

There is a finite amount of pretty much everything on Earth. Many raw materials have multiple uses. Should we jack up the price of every natural resouce -- iron, diamonds, titanium -- because of this? In the past century we have seen what happens when people are given the power to make drastic alterations to the workings of the market. A planned economy is not a lovely thing -- and tends to have horrible pollution problems.

Noe that if oil is made artificially expensive, one adjustment will probably be increased use of coal, which is hardly best for the environment.

Financial advice for Bob: Buy oil futures, because you are the only person in the world smart enough to figure out that oil will eventually run out. (Of course, if people really were as bad at planning for the future as Bob believes, there wouldn't be any future markets in the first place.)

I realize that the price of gas is rising and will continue to rise through the summer and years as global demand increases. What I object to is the huge one-day or two-day increases that have no justification. When demand was waning late last year, I heard an interview with an oil executive who was asked why gas prices weren't dropping very fast. His response: ``We have to exhaust our high-priced inventory before prices will fall.'' Why don't they ever exhaust lower priced inventory before prices rise? Answer: Because they use these transitions to gouge Americans out of billions!

Brad Howald
Reno

Financial advice for Brad: If you think gas costs too much for one or two days, then wait for a few days to buy it.

Wait a minute, I think I came up with a brilliant idea: Buy Low, Sell High. Clearly my talents are wasted on blogging.

As I read about gas prices rising due to various supply and demand factors and the price of crude oil, I couldn't help but get disgusted at the assumption by the oil industry that we're all idiots. Yes, the price of crude has to have an impact on the price of refined product; that's obvious. And yes, short supplies in the face of increasing demand also result in rising prices. But how can the price of gas that's in the underground tank right now go up because of the price of crude, which won't be refined into gasoline for several days or weeks, or the availability of gas in the future? When prices at the pump jump the same day as the price of crude on the commodities market, or a spill or refinery mishap, etc., it can only be a result of speculative gouging. If this isn't price fixing, what is?

Michael Singer
Felton

The problem is that the gas station owners have these labels for "cheap gas" and "expensive" gas that they apply to their underground tanks. But they can never remember which is which and they get mixed up! Silly gas station owners!

Financial advice for Michael: When Dr. Evil announces that his invention will turn 90% of the world's precious metals to lead, you might not want to sell that gold for the $300 an ounce you paid for it.

I know you get an abundance of these letters but this is getting ridiculous. The oil companies use every excuse in the world to jack up prices. Other than the price of crude oil going up, they are just that -- excuses. Just because there is less of something in reserve, why does the price change on a daily basis? I haven't seen a station out of gas since the '70s.
Pete Furman
Foster City

Q If oil companies are passing increased costs, how can they explain that they're all reporting record profits? I smell a rat here, and it's not to difficult to tell where the rat is.

Warren Serkin

Financial advice for Pete and Warren: Buy stock in oil companies!

Better yet, all the whiners who complain about oil prices, and pester the media and the government to do something about it, should invest in a new oil company that would undercut all the existing corporations' "gouging." Then they could make money and help consumers!

Posted 12:54 PM by Floyd

The following words are verboten for at least a week:

Baseball
Athletics
Oakland
Closer
Pitching

Please do not utter these words in my presence if you value your life. Thank you.

Oh, and another one:

Rotisserie

after the 13 hitters on my fantasy baseball team produced one run, five hits, and one RBI yesterday. Thank God for Roger Clemens. He even hits better than a lot of my position players -- I'm talkin' to you, Randy if-you-spell-it-wrong-it-doesn't-count-as-a Winn -- not that I get credit for pitcher hitting.

Posted 1:33 PM by Floyd

I've noticed a lot of referrals from my very first Instalanche in September of 2002, when Glenn Reynolds was debating with Eric Alterman about whether the US should model itself after Sweden. Glenn linked to my citation of statistics that showed that middle-class Swedes were in some respects worse off than poor Americans.

Glenn linked to my blog, not to the article, which is why you are seeing May 2004 posts. Here is the article that Glenn referenced.

I welcome email from my readers, so if you are having trouble finding a post, feel free to send me a note.

Posted 2:56 PM by Floyd

A fashionable slur among the anti-war crowd is to term opponents "theocrats" and "neocons." Here's a (poorly-spelled) example from Jeff Goldstein's comments:

Who said that "facts are stubborn things"? Fact: US soldiers died. The effort to cover up this fact speaks of an agenda to cover up facts. We can't supress facts that are not convenient to the Theocract/Neocon agenda. We should get more information, not less.

There's some really nasty religious bigotry tucked away in those two terms: If a Bush administration member is a Christian, he's a "theocrat," and if he's Jewish then call him a "neocon." And since there are few Buddhists or Zoroastrans in Washington, you have your bases covered.

Here's another example, also gleaned from the same post: "Captain Normal" objected to Sinclair Broadcasting's decision that it would not air Ted Koppel's defeatism-cum-dead-soldier-roll call on Nightline. Captain Normal posted a cartoon of "Republican Jesus" who said: "Sinclair Broadcasting got it right. I've hidden the fallen soldiers of the Iraq war in purgatory, so they don't embarrass the incoming theocons."

This does not reveal anything about George Bush and Republicans. All it tells us is that Captain Normal and his buddies are bigoted against Christians. Bush justified his decision to invade Iraq on secular grounds of human rights and self-defense. If Bush has said the word "God," it is in the sense that "crimes cry out against God," which even an atheist like me might utter. I have never heard Bush or any members of his staff say that Yahweh told him to go to Mesopotamia and smite the Baath party.

I mean, I support America's actions in Iraq, and I'm an Oakland Athletics fan, but the two have nothing to do with each other. Yelling about "theocrats" is just as dumb as if someone were to create a "Republican Athletic" cartoon in which a green-and-gold clad baseball player explains that he hid fallen soldiers bodies because they were from Seattle, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

Not to mention that anti-Christian bigotry is about the worst possible tactic you could use to convince Americans to follow your political agenda. Hope you enjoy your next four years of protest marches, assholes.